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Salem's Lot (2004 Miniseries)
The story opens with Ben Mears attacking the priest Donald Callahan in a homeless shelter. They fall together from a high window into the street. In the hospital, Ben Mears tells his story and the reasons behind his fight with the priest to an orderly. This takes the form of a flashback in which the miniseries' central plot unfolds. In the flashback, Ben, a successful writer, returns to his hometown, Jerusalem's Lot (also known as 'Salem's Lot), intending to write a novel while he deals with the demons of his past. He tells Susan Norton (a waitress and former art student whom he has befriended), that as a child he accepted a dare to enter the house of Hubie Marsden. Local legend said that there was something wrong with the house and/or its owner, suggesting that he tortured and murdered children. That night in the house, Ben overheard something horrible — including Hubie begging for his life before committing suicide. Ben believes that he also heard Hubie Marsten's last victim crying for help, but Ben was too afraid to find or help him and fled. Ben plans to rent and investigate the house to bring catharsis to himself and to gather material for his novel, but he discovers that the owner, Larry Crockett, has sold it to a pair of antique dealers, Richard Straker and Kurt Barlow. Shortly thereafter, the dark secrets of the town's residents begin to emerge. Crockett is sexually abusing his daughter Ruthie. When she spends time with a cripple named Dud (Cowell) whom Crockett employs, Crockett fires him. Evie, who runs the boarding house where Ben stays, played evil games with Hubie Marsten when they were teenagers. The school bus driver is a bully who loves to torment the children he transports, forcing those he doesn't like to walk home. These painful revelations increase in frequency and magnitude up until the arrival of the mysterious Barlow. Barlow, a master vampire, is influencing some of these occurrences as a prelude to "recruiting" more vampires to serve him. A child vanishes, and his brother then sickens and dies. Laborer Mike Ryerson buries the boy, then also gets sick and dies. He returns from the grave (complete with autopsy scars) to tempt high school teacher Matt Burke, who is rescued but suffers a heart attack. Ben is persuaded by the mounting evidence that the town is plagued by vampirism. He and his allies, Dr. Cody, Father Callahan and Mark Petrie begin acting as vampire hunters, although they balk upon finding that Susan Norton has become a victim. Ben insists upon targeting Barlow in the hopes that Barlow's victims might be restored upon his destruction. The characters face their own psychological demons as the physical demons surround them. Father Callahan, trying to confront Barlow by himself, finds his faith is not strong enough. Callahan is forced to drink Barlow's blood, turning Callahan into Barlow's servant. Larry Crockett, who invited the vampire into town, sees his daughter willingly join the vampiric Dud in the night. Most of all, Ben still wrestles with his own guilt and personal failures. In the course of the hunt, Cody and Burke are killed, and Crockett, who abandons Ben and Mark to find his daughter, is killed and devoured by Dud and the other vampires instead of being turned into one of them. Mark Petrie and Ben manage to destroy Barlow, but not before he taunts Ben, liking Ben to himself as another parasite who preys on the tragedies of others. Additionally, Ben's hypothesis is disproven: though Barlow is destroyed, Susan is still a vampire. She tells him that the boy he failed to rescue all those years ago was already dead when Marsten died, and Ben was never to blame. When Susan turns to attack Mark, Ben is forced to destroy her. In the end, Ben and Mark set the Marsten House alight, and during a chase with the school bus driver, who was turned into a vampire by his former charges and bullying victims, a gas station is damaged and goes up in flames. As the fires begin to spread, Callahan screams vows of revenge against Ben as the town's now vampirized population flocks to him. As Ben concludes his flashback, the orderly is deeply moved and frightened by the story, then realizes that Ben wasn't acting alone. He leaves to look after Father Callahan, but finds him dead, suffocated with a pillow. While he is absent, Mark slips into Ben's room to tell him that the hunt is now over, whereupon Ben suffers a cardiac arrest. The orderly returns and corners Mark, but decides to let him go. In his hospital room, Ben passes away, feeling at peace.